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In a weekend that featured tough conditions for all competitors in the CQ WW SSB contest, Team K3LR seems to have come out on top in this year's Multi-Multi battle in the US, putting them in line for a repeat victory.
K3LR claimed 17 million points for a sizeable lead on W3LPL at 15.2 million. KC1XX is third at 13.1 million.
"Conditions were better than we expected on 15, 40, 80 and 160 meters," said Tim Duffy K3LR.
"With our recent antenna improvements and super operators, we did very well on these bands," Duffy told radio-sport.net.
The numbers certainly bear that out, as amongst the Big Three, K3LR had more QSO's on every band except 160 (W3LPL) and 10 (KC1XX).
"Extreme thanks to Dave, W9ZRX who worked countless hours getting the station ready to go and improved since last season," said Duffy.
Once again there's a big gap in the claimed scores of the top three in Multi-Multi and the rest. Back in fourth place at 7.9 million in the squad of Rick Daugherty NQ4I.
"It's disappointing that our score does not reflect our hard work," Daugherty told radio-sport.net. "We had the best ever score on 160m, and on 80m we have ever done.
"I can only hope that a few sunspots will level things out some," NQ4I added, pointing especially at 20 meters.
"Compared with the scores turned in from the Northeast US shows that they were in a different ball game than we were in."
In terms of a "different" ball game, in the Multi-Two category, that may apply best to the team assembled by John Rodgers WE3C, as they steamrolled the opposition in the US, claiming 11.5 million points, 3.5 million more than Team N3RS.
"We experienced a huge improvement in our results over last year," Rodgers reported on 3830.
"John's station near Reading PA is constantly being improved, and it shows," said John Crovelli W2GD. "The most recent redesign of his 40M 4 element. yagi at 160' produced significant dividends."
"Our Q's almost doubled from last year (on 40) and we are anxious to see how well it performs in the CW contest," Rodgers added.
As for the Multi-Single category, that may be determined by the log checkers, as the the top two scores are with 19k points.
Leading the pack is K9RS at 4.63 million to 4.61 million for Team N0NI.
"The big surprise to us was the effort out of N0NI," said Crovelli, who was at K9RS this year, and said that N0NI was working Europeans on 15 meters who weren't even audible on the East Coast.
"Apparently the skip was going right over our heads."
Check back for updates all week on this year's CQ WW SSB Contest!
P40A (KK9A) - SOAB LP
IK5RUN - SOAB QRP
RU9WX - SO Assisted
CN3A - Multi-Single
AO8A - Multi-Two
TS6A - Multi-Multi
While Multi scores from around the world have not fully trickled in as yet, the outlines are there for a repeat win evidently in Multi-Two for Team AO8A in the Canary Islands.
Their prowess though did not ruin the busy weekend of teams like 6Y1V in Jamaica, who had on hand among others Dave Lawley G4BUO.
"Had a lot of fun on my first trip to the Caribbean. Very nice station, and the whole team got on well," Lawley told radio-sport.net.
6Y1V rang up 15 million points, 500k more than Team PJ4E.
"We had numerous problems this year," said Kyle Chavis WA4PGM, "But we continued to push forward to the end."
In the Multi-Single category, the Russian group of P33W has the early lead, as they try to improve on last year's third place finish.
"It was a real DX-pedition style of operation," reported team member Harry Booklan RA3AUU on 3830.
"We arrived 6 days before contest and spent whole time for antenna construction and equipment installation."
It paid off with almost 2600 QSO's on 15 meters and over 2600 on 20, as they rattled of 16.8 million points.
